“I believe right now we can,” Kolya said somberly, and held up his Strop—at least it should have been his Strop. It was the same thick piece of leather, but the runes carved in it were completely destroyed. Merrick stared at it blankly, not quite understanding for a long time what he was seeing. The sharp edges where Kolya had once marked the symbols were wrenched apart as if subject to a tiny gunpowder explosion.
The shapes were broken and rent, and the personal sigil that would have sat between the Deacon’s brows was blasted clean on the rock that should have held it. Merrick’s stomach twisted and he found his throat trapped shut. He couldn’t breathe. By the Blood, this had better be a hallucination.
“How…what…” was the best he could manage through his abruptly dry throat.
Kolya too was blinking and now Merrick saw that he was holding on to the doorway for real support. The older Deacon was shaking. “We don’t know. No one knows, Merrick. However now is a very fine time for one insignificant Sensitive to make himself scarce in the confusion.”
That in the midst of this crisis Sorcha’s former husband would think of helping her new partner was hard for Merrick to believe. “Shouldn’t you be helping the others of our Order instead of getting me—”
“She asked me to help.” Kolya went on, now pulling Merrick physically with him.
“Sorcha?”
Choking back a laugh, the other Deacon shook his head. “No, not Deacon Faris. Someone else, someone with dark hair and eyes in my dreams. I ignored her for the last week, but then last night she came and insisted that tomorrow something terrible would happen to you. That this would be the only chance to get you out and safe.”
Merrick pressed his eyes shut, but he could still see her. Nynnia. The woman he had fallen in love with, lost, found again, only to lose her for good. On the Otherside, she apparently had not forgotten him either. One of the Ancients, the Ehtia, she still had access to more information than anyone in the mortal realm.
“I cannot let anything happen to you.” Kolya’s lips pressed together in a white line. “And I take my oath to my fellow Deacons very seriously. More seriously it seems than the Arch Abbot.”
Deacon Kolya Petav could have no way of knowing about Nynnia. “But why should you trust some woman in your dream?” Merrick probed.
The other Deacon’s eyes drifted away. “Because I ignored her advice once and lost something very precious to me.”
Merrick nodded, understanding all too well about lost chances. He would not embarrass his rescuer further, and so followed him quietly out into the stairwell.
“Do you have a plan?” Merrick whispered, tugging up the hood of his cloak.
“Not really,” Kolya said, flashing a wry smile over his shoulder, “but then Sorcha always accused me of not being spontaneous enough, so this is a good time to work on it.”
It was his idea of humor—Merrick understood that—but considering the seriousness of what he was saying it was poorly timed. Still, he was not about to turn his back on his rescuer.
Reaching the top of the stairs, they entered the Devotional. Deacons of all kinds were there: some were slumped in the pews sobbing, others clustered in groups yelling at each other, while more still ran here and there. No one was taking any notice of anyone else—including two Sensitives trying their best to remain invisible. Merrick tentatively reached for the Bond and his Center, but he already could feel what awaited him.
He had thought the Silence Room was terrible, but at least he had known that if he went outside beyond its weirstoned walls, everything would be normal and as he had left it. Only Kolya’s hand against his back kept him moving in this new, far more terrible silence.
His eyes however were taking it all in. They passed a young Active, wrapped in her blue cloak, who was cradling her Gauntlet like a wounded baby. The runes were destroyed just as Kolya’s had been. Tears streamed from her eyes and she was rocking back and forth.
“I feel lucky,” Kolya whispered, “that thanks to Sorcha’s stubbornness I do not have a Bond to lose. Not a new one at least.”
It was a strange thing to say, but everyone appeared to be looking for comfort where they could find it.
“Where are the Presbyters?” he asked as they hurried, as discreetly as they could, down the length of the vast stone building.
“In Council. Mournling has gone into deep meditation and no one knows where Arch Abbot Rictun is. Everyone is in disarray.” They had reached the end of the Devotional and passed out into the courtyard.
When Merrick made for the gate, Kolya caught his elbow. “Not just yet. Your little dream friend told me of something else we must get in the library.”
Merrick was so dazed that he allowed himself to be bundled toward the library. The light here was bright and clear, but everything else was foggy. “How are the runes gone? How can that be?” he muttered under his breath, but none around him seemed to have answers.
Kolya pulled open the doors and they hurried into the dim recesses of the library. Merrick had spent many happy days here as a novitiate, and later had come here to have questions answered, or just to have a little silence and peace away from Sorcha. The librarian, Stoly, was young but dedicated to her charges. She was also a lay Sister, wearing the gray, and so would not be affected by the loss of Gauntlets or Strop.
Still when the two men burst in, they found her seated at her desk, hands before her, staring into nothingness. Kolya pointed off toward the back of the hall. “The book I want is back there. Stoly, may I?”
She waved one hand distractedly at him without making eye contact. “Whatever you need, Deacon Petav,” she said softly.
While Kolya strode off, Merrick decided to wait for a moment. He had never seen the librarian like this, but then this was a day of confusion. Pulling up a chair, he sat down next to her and touched the back of her hand.
She glanced up as if he had shot her. Her green eyes were brimming with unshed tears, and she brushed at them distractedly. “Deacon Chambers? Oh, by the Bones, Merrick!” Now her hand clenched around his.
It was so strange to have the librarian touching him when Stoly had always been so self-contained and almost aloof. Yet, she was also a woman of knowledge, and he knew at this moment that they needed knowledge, so he did not disentangle his fingers from hers. They were all looking for reassurance wherever they could find it after all.
So he clenched her fingertips tightly. “What has happened Stoly? The runes destroyed? How is that possible?” He would have thought maybe a few of his colleagues might have come here for answers. His time in the Silence Room had perhaps prepared him better for all this.
In the thick but somehow comforting quiet of the library, he could hear Kolya moving around, walking among the tall stacks of books, parchments and tablets. But what did any of that history matter if the Order was broken? Merrick swallowed hard on his own despair.
“The Pattern,” Stoly murmured. “It has to be the Pattern.”
The younger Deacon’s head flicked up, and he stared at the librarian. “The Pattern? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Stoly leaned back and closed her eyes. “You would not have. It is a secret for the Council, and of course, for your humble librarian.”
“When the first Deacon made the first Gauntlets and Strops, there was a Pattern he followed; a recipe you might say, for how to use the runes to wield the power of the geists. Every Order of Deacons since then has made their own Pattern after each new schism. When the Order came to Arkaym they swore fealty to the Emperor, and as part of that oath they handed over the Pattern.” She looked up at Merrick and shook her head. “No one thought it was anything more than a ritual. A sign of trust—because why would the Emperor destroy the Order?”
Merrick leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, but no matter what he did he saw del Rue’s satisfied smile. How long had Zofiya said that poisonous man had been working on the Emperor? How many hours had he devoted to twisting Kaleva’s opinion of the
Order of the Eye and the Fist? And how hard had he laughed when Merrick fell into bed with the Grand Duchess?
He loved the Order. It had given him control and strength in a world where he thought he would never have those things. Now, the grim truth was, it seemed that he had assisted in its destruction.
“We have to hurry.” Kolya appeared out of the stacks, a leather-bound and rather dusty book under one arm. Merrick and Stoly jumped at his sudden arrival.
She might be traumatized by the day’s events, but she was still a librarian. “Where did you get that?” she snapped.
Kolya actually glared at her—the first time Merrick had seen any sign of anger from the mild Sensitive. “Do you think now is the time to argue about such things? Need I remind you what is happening?”
Stoly glanced between the two men before slumping back in her chair. “Take what you want, Deacon. I hope it helps—as if anything can now.”
Apparently this latest crisis had roused something in even Sorcha’s former husband and partner. Merrick wondered what she would think of that. In fact, he wondered what she would be thinking right at this moment when her Gauntlets were gone. She was older than he, and couldn’t even remember life before the Order.
I should be with her, he thought miserably, instead of here with Deacon Petav.
He barely had time to thank Stoly before Kolya pulled him out of the library. “They will be coming to get you from the Silence Room soon enough. Who do you think they will throw to the wolves for this?”
Together, heads down, hoods firmly in place, they walked as quickly as they dared toward the gate. Merrick didn’t hazard a look up, but by straining his ears, he was sure he could make out more organized sounds coming from behind them in the direction of the Devotional. Despite himself, he picked up the pace.
They reached the postern gate. Two lay Brothers were still there, but they were talking to each other and not taking much notice of anything else. They wouldn’t stop two Sensitives leaving when the whole Mother Abbey was in turmoil.
They wouldn’t, until a voice called out. “Close the gate!”
Merrick and Kolya winced, and spun around. It was indeed Arch Abbot Rictun, with the rest of the Presbyterial Council trotting to catch up to him. All of them were making quick time toward the two Sensitives.
Merrick spun around, and contemplated running for it, but the lay Brothers had heard their leader and shoved the lever to bring down the portcullis. Hearing their councilors, all of the confused and frightened Deacons in the area began to gather around Merrick and Kolya. It was incredible. These were his friends, his colleagues, his classmates but now their expressions were dark. Everything they had known and relied on had been taken away, and they were looking for answers—and scapegoats.
Rictun, the handsome, tall Arch Abbot, now looked haggard and angry. “Come back to the Silence Room, Deacon Chambers.”
Merrick swallowed hard. “There hardly seems to be any reason for that. I think I would like to pursue my own investigation since I am the one accused of stealing away the Grand Duchess Zofiya.”
“We cannot allow that.” The Presbyter Secondo Zathra Trelaine tottered forward. He was a tiny bundle of scars and wrinkles, and his voice was soft, yet when he spoke every Deacon, Active, Sensitive and lay Brother listened. “We must surrender you to the Emperor if we hope to rebuild the Gauntlet and the Strop.” He pointed straight at Merrick, and the young Deacon flinched.
Once, the gaze of the former Presbyter of the Actives would have been terrifying. The man had stood in the center of monumental powers and commanded them all. He’d banished and destroyed more geists than Merrick could imagine—yet even he was willing to throw the young Deacon to the Imperial wolf to get his powers back. If that was even possible.
He ran his eye over the throng of his fellows. Some met his gaze with grim determination, but many of them glanced away, staring at their toes or at the dark clouds gathering above them. He couldn’t feel a Bond with any of them, except—oddly enough—with the one at his back. Kolya was the only one to remain at his side.
The Deacons were still as dedicated and disciplined as he knew them to be, but the loyalty he’d felt a part of was gone. He really was alone.
However, he still had to find Zofiya, and he couldn’t do that from a prison cell.
“I didn’t think weapons would be necessary,” Kolya whispered to him, “but now I wonder if I should have—”
“No,” Merrick replied sharply, “I will not strike down any of our own.”
The crowd now advancing on them, however, did not look like they shared his misgivings about violence. Among them, Merrick spotted another face. This one did not look angry or distressed. Deacon Garil Reeceson instead looked broken. Merrick wondered if the old Deacon had foreseen all of this coming to pass.
They were all operating without the usual information they got from their Centers and their Sensitivity, and they were all frightened by what had happened. Some of the Deacons facing him had been raised as children within the safety of the Order.
Merrick knew he couldn’t allow himself to be taken. Del Rue would win—and with very little effort.
“I’m sorry,” Merrick whispered, “I am so sorry.”
And then deep within him, beyond the training of the Order, the spark ignited. Somehow, without the strictures and constraints learned in the Mother Abbey, Merrick’s wild talent found him. It was a smoldering ember that had been waiting to be blown upon. With a cry, Merrick let it out. All of his discipline and control was swept away; he had no way of directing or holding it back.
The wildness fanned out among all of the Order gathered in the courtyard, and then spread from there to wrap itself around the Mother Abbey itself. It pierced all of them through, whispered that everything they held dear and believed in was wasted. Then it howled into their deepest souls that these most important things were lost, and they were utterly alone. Nothing remained.
Merrick was the calm center in a storm of broken dreams, but he was as lost as they were. When he opened his eyes, swaying slightly on his feet, he was the only one still standing. Everyone, from high-and-mighty Presbyter, to lowly lay Deacon from the infirmary, was curled up on the pavement, their arms clutching their knees and their eyes wide and staring.
He had done this before, brought low the crowds outside the Imperial prison in Vermillion so that they could escape with Raed. They had been people who were bent on ripping a good man to pieces, and he’d easily turned their despair at the death of the Arch Abbot against them. The wild talent had left them crying in the streets. That was one thing, but this was another altogether.
These were Deacons of the Order, his friends and colleagues, and he had turned them to terrified children.
“What have I become,” he said, running his hand through his hair, and looking around in despair. “There’s no going back from this.”
Yet this outrage would be for nothing if he did not recover Zofiya from the Circle of Stars and stop whatever plan they had set to running within the Empire. He took Kolya under the arm, and helped him to his feet. The application of his touch was enough to shake him free of the talent’s grip.
He looked up at Merrick with undisguised horror. “How…how did you—”
“No time,” the young Deacon barked in return, “we have to get out of here while we can.” Now it was he that was tugging his rescuer along. Together they levered the gates open and stepped over the curled forms of the lay Brothers that guarded it.
Out on the street, everyday folk went about their business, chatting, bartering and completely unaware of the great and momentous events occurring behind the Mother Abbey’s walls. The sudden and dark thought flashed through Merrick that they would know soon enough. When no Order stood between them and the predations of the geists, the citizens of the Empire would feel the bite of the undead once again. They had lived under the protection of the Deacons for years, and had almost forgotten what their lives had been like before their
coming.
Soon, they would be reminded.
Merrick’s hand tightened on Kolya’s shoulder. “I hope you had a plan that involved more than us just standing on the doorstep of the Mother Abbey.”
The tall blond man blinked, still shaking off the effects of the talent on him. “I had a few ideas.” He pulled two brown cloaks out from under a nearby cart, and hastily handed one to Merrick, before taking the second for himself. “Follow me, we’re going to the Edge.”
They stripped off their cloaks of the Order, but could not bear to part with them. Instead, when they donned the rough common ones, they tucked the bundled green cloaks under their arms. Pulling up this new and unwelcome hood, the younger man turned to follow Kolya.
It didn’t matter where they went, today’s events would haunt them both forever. No amount of running was going to change that. Merrick could only hope they would be able to find Zofiya and fix everything before it was irreversible.
EIGHTEEN
Strife in the Family
The riser rattled and jerked its way up the shaft interminably slowly. Sorcha stood as tall as she could manage—though her mind was in tumult. She was trying to be calm, as an example to the crew. In truth, she’d never had much to do with tinker’s devices. They were almost as secretive and insular as the Deacons.
Merrick had told her plenty about the Order of the Circle of Stars, and how they had melded weirstone and runes to their own purposes. She could only hope that they wouldn’t add in tinkering to that mix. As if to emphasize her thoughts, Aachon’s weirstone flared, creating an eerie glow that set everyone’s faces into odd masks.
The Deacon shook her head. She was becoming quite fanciful. The disturbing thought followed; had her mother been fanciful? No, no, no! She would not consider that right now. She would not think about going through the Order’s records looking for a Sensitive Deacon called Caoirse, or finding some long-lost relatives she knew nothing of. At least now she was aware of where she came from, and had a hint about her past. What that could mean would be truly something to consider once they got out of here. Merrick would be able to help with that.
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